I just soldiered through another Jim Nantz broadcast to watch the Buffalo Bills wrap up a victory and the second seed in the playoffs.
It's the completion of an emotionally exhausting week for the Bills after the on-field collapse and hospitalization of safety Damar Hamlin, and I am, once again, very proud of my favorite team.
Weeks before this happened, I was watching head coach Sean McDermott during a press conference after the Bills' win over the Dolphins and it struck me how impressed I was with McDermott as a coach. He answered reporters' questions, he smiled, he joked a little, he wasn't defensive, it was not at all what I am used to with a lot of NFL coaches. Many of them can be jerks, oafs, condescending generals, I've seen it in person. McDermott doesn't seem to be like that. He's a true leader. I think a lot more people came to that conclusion this past week.
This prompted me to look around and see what I could find as far as a football card for McDermott, but I knew the answer already. There aren't any.
Coaches don't exist in the world of NFL cards. A lot of players don't exist according to NFL cards, too. Collecting football cards seems to be about collecting just the stars and rookies and that's it. And for someone like me, who likes to see the full representation of a team, or as full as possible, collecting current football cards is not for me.
When I collected football cards as a kid, I rarely saw coaches on cards then either. And not every player on the team was represented -- Topps' NFL sets were always smaller in number than its baseball sets, even though there are far more players on an NFL team than an MLB team.
But I knew a defensive lineman existed in 1979 because I saw them on my cards and I always wondered why the offensive tackles never had any stats on the back. But do a search of Bills players in Panini Donruss this year and you will come up with the skill positions -- quarterback, running back, receiver and top secondary players. Oh, and promising rookies. That's it. Linemen don't exist. Kickers don't exist. Coaches don't exist.
That's why I miss good ol' Pro Set, which at least tried to represent the NFL.
All of my Marv Levy cards -- all 3 of them -- come from Pro Set. He showed up in Pro Set four consecutive years.
Something to shoot for, Panini, or whoever will be issuing football cards in the future.
Marv Levy was the Bills' coach when I covered the team. I never got to talk to him one-on-one. Even back then, NFL coaches talked to journalists en masse. (I've always hated the mass press conference in which reporters are forced to yell out questions and coaches or players have their heads on a swivel attempting to figure out which question to answer).
But even without talking to Levy face-to-face, I knew he wasn't like other NFL head coaches. You've all seen the highlights, of him using words no other NFL coach would ever use. My all-time favorite Levy quote is "World War II was a must-win." The Bills haven't had a coach I admire as much as McDermott since Levy.
I went back and looked at my clippings from those Bills games I covered and searched for Levy quotes. But I couldn't find anything that captured his personality from what I put in those stories. My first story in which I used one of his quotes was before a Bills game against the Raiders in December of 1988. He was talking about the Raiders' offensive prowess.
"Three of their (offensive) guys are household names," he said, referring to Marcus Allen, Bo Jackson and Tim Brown. "And if you're in Canada the fourth is."
He was referring to Mervyn Fernandez, who led the Canadian Football League in receiving four straight years during the mid-1980s. That was a little bit of Levy there, pointing out the CFL guy.
I think the NFL has gotten better at hiring more media-savvy coaches, maybe at the expense of giving up a few colorful sound bytes.
It'd be nice if I could find a Sean McDermott card in a pack, or at least a card of Damar Hamlin as an NFL player.
Oh, and don't go looking up one of Hamlin's draft pick cards on COMC.
Comments
I will always remember Marv Levy from the Football Follies videos calling the referee an "over-officious jerk!" from back in his days with the Chiefs.
He's 97!
Less cards and effort & higher price tags mean no more punters, coaches and cheerleaders.
I often think there'll be a day when 1 in 2 boxes may have 1 card.
Side story: Last weekend, I was in the process of reorganizing stuff in my office and I came across a set of 1998 Upper Deck Shopko Green Bay Packers. It was huge (90 cards) with 50 different players. But even that set left out Coach Holmgren.